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Speculative Blackness

The Future of Race in Science Fiction

André M. Carrington analyzes the highly racialized genre of speculative fiction—including science fiction, fantasy, and utopian works, along with their fan cultures—to illustrate the relationship between genre conventions in media and the meanings ascribed to blackness in the popular imagination. Speculative Blackness reveals new understandings of the significance of blackness in twentieth-century American literature and culture.

André M. Carrington takes readers on a voyage that beautifully maps gendered and sexualized articulations of Blackness across different speculative genres and media... Speculative Blackness is a wonderful book that makes indispensable contributions to Black studies, literary studies, studies science fiction fan fiction and fandom, and Afrofuturism.

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Alexander G. Weheliye, Northwestern University

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In Speculative Blackness, André M. Carrington analyzes the highly racialized genre of speculative fiction—including science fiction, fantasy, and utopian works, along with their fan cultures—to illustrate the relationship between genre conventions in media and the meanings ascribed to blackness in the popular imagination.

Carrington’s argument about authorship, fandom, and race in a genre that has been both marginalized and celebrated offers a black perspective on iconic works of science fiction. He examines the career of actor Nichelle Nichols, who portrayed the character Uhura in the original Star Trek television series and later became a recruiter for NASA, and the spin-off series Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, set on a space station commanded by a black captain. He recovers a pivotal but overlooked moment in 1950s science fiction fandom in which readers and writers of fanzines confronted issues of race by dealing with a fictitious black fan writer and questioning the relevance of race to his ostensible contributions to the ‘zines. Carrington mines the productions of Marvel comics and the black-owned comics publisher Milestone Media, particularly the representations of black sexuality in its flagship title, Icon. He also interrogates online fan fiction about black British women in Buffy the Vampire Slayer and the Harry Potter series.

Throughout this nuanced analysis, Carrington theorizes the relationship between race and genre in cultural production, revealing new understandings of the significance of blackness in twentieth-century American literature and culture.

André M. Carrington is assistant professor of English at Drexel University.

André M. Carrington takes readers on a voyage that beautifully maps gendered and sexualized articulations of Blackness across different speculative genres and media... Speculative Blackness is a wonderful book that makes indispensable contributions to Black studies, literary studies, studies science fiction fan fiction and fandom, and Afrofuturism.

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Alexander G. Weheliye, Northwestern University

An excellent exploration of blackness in sci-fi.

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PopMatters

This is required reading for those interested in popular culture’s role in constructing social identity.

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CHOICE

Speculative Blackness convincingly persuades that speculative fiction is an ideal space to explore the boundaries of blackness, and to consider new ways of thinking about the way blackness as a category is constructed and produced.

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Souls: A Critical Journal of Black Politics, Culture, and Society

Speculative Blackness makes an important contribution to ongoing conversations (both in the academy and in fan culture) about race and science fiction.

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